Daniel Heath Justice wins UBC Killam Research Prize

The Department of English is pleased to announce Daniel Heath Justice has been awarded a 2015 UBC Killam Research Prize. As well as Professor of English, Daniel is Chair of the First Nations and Indigenous Studies Program, and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Literature and Expressive Culture. He received this award in recognition of his leadership in the field of Indigenous Literary Studies and for his many contributions to it, including Our Fire Survives the Storm: A Cherokee Literary History (2006), The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literature (co-edited with James H. Cox, 2014), and Why Indigenous Literature Matters (forthcoming 2016). Professor Justice is also the author of the acclaimed speculative fiction series, The Way of Thorn and Thunder: The Kynship Chronicles, and of Badger (2015), part of the University of Chicago Press/Reaktion Books’ Animal Series. Daniel’s current scholarship focuses on the role of Indigenous writing, art, and performance in expressing, transforming, and creating meaningful kinship relationships, especially between Indigenous peoples and the other-than-human world.

The Killam Trusts were established in memory of Izaak Walton Killam through the will of his wife, Dorothy J. Killam, and through gifts made during her lifetime. Their primary purpose is to support advanced education and research at five Canadian Universities and the Canada Council for the Arts. The Killam Laureates are forging paths of discovery in the five disciplines of Health Sciences, Natural Sciences, Engineering, Social Sciences and Humanities. UBC Killam Research prizes are selected by UBC’s Faculty Research Award Committee, which spands arts and humanities, applied science, science, and medicine.

Congratulations, Daniel!

Daniel Heath Justice

I am a Colorado-born Canadian citizen of the Cherokee Nation, appointed as Professor in the Department of English and the First Nations and Indigenous Studies Program in the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies. My work in Indigenous literary studies takes up questions and issues of kinship, belonging, sexuality, personhood, and nationhood, and engages historical, political, aesthetic, and representational contexts and concerns.